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“Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors; we borrow it from our Children.”Ancient American Indian Proverb Civilitas successit barbarum Ubi Jus - Ibi Remedium ----> Equity sees that as done what ought to be done Equity will not suffer a wrong to be without a remedy - Equity delights in equality - One who seeks equity must do equity - Equity aids the vigilant, not those who slumber on their rights - Equity imputes an intent to fulfill an obligation - Equity acts in personam - Equity abhors a forfeiture - Equity does not require an idle gesture - He who comes into equity must come with clean hands - Equity delights to do justice and not by halves -Equity will not complete an imperfect gift - Equity will not allow a statute to be used as a cloak for fraud

Build sports carUse that money to build an affordable carUse that money to build an even more affordable carWhile doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation optionsDon’t tell anyone

Free parking and charging stations for electric cars in Oslo. Norway offers generous incentives that make the vehicles cheaper to buy, and other benefits once they are on the road.

Sales of electric and hybrid cars in Norway outpaced those running on fossil fuels last year, cementing the country’s position as a global leader in the push to restrict vehicle emissions.

Norway, a major oil exporter, would seem an unlikely champion of newer, cleaner-running vehicles. But the country offers generous incentives that make electric cars cheaper to buy, and provides additional benefits once the vehicles are on the road.

Countries around the world have ramped up their promotion of hybrid and electric cars. As China tries to improve air quality and dominate new vehicle technology, the government there wants one in five cars sold to run on alternative fuels by 2025. France and Britain plan to end the sale of gasoline- and diesel-powered cars by 2040.

Norway is ahead of the rest of the world. About 52 percent of the new cars sold in the country last year ran on new forms of fuel, according the data released on Thursday by Norway’s Road Traffic Advisory Board, OFV. The share of diesel cars, which were once considered more environmentally friendly but are now in the spotlight for their noxious emissions, fell sharply.

“This trend will only increase,” Oyvind Solberg Thorsen, OFV’s director, said in a statement. “This is good for both road safety and the environment.”

Sales of electric cars could have been even higher, according to Christina Bu, secretary general of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association, but some buyers continued to hold out for newer models like Tesla’s Model 3.

Although electric vehicles make up a just small portion of the global market now, automakers — including those, like Tesla, that produce only electric models, and giants like Volkswagen — have bet billions of dollars that such vehicles will soon be as cheap and ubiquitous as conventional cars. Investments in charging stations and other technology connected to electric vehicles are also increasing.

General Motors and Ford Motor have said they will shift their focus to electric models, while carmakers like Volvo have moved to phase out the internal combustion engine entirely. Joining the fray are entrepreneurs like James Dyson who have their own plans to build electric vehicles.

As the market grows, makers of electric cars are facing difficulties. Tesla has lagged in its production of the Model 3, its first mass-market offering. And a slump in overall car sales in the United States could put a crimp in the expansion of electric vehicles.

Norway, which wants to phase out diesel and gasoline cars by 2025 , offers a counterexample.

The country’s embrace of electric cars has been hastened by hefty government subsidies and tax breaks that make the technology more affordable. The authorities have expanded the nationwide network of charging stations. They also offer electric car drivers a bevy of other benefits: cheaper parking, the use of bus lanes for car-poolers during rush hours, and exemptions from the vast majority of road tolls.

As a result, electric cars — identified by license plates that begin with the letters EL or EK — are a common sight. Teslas can frequently be seen on Norwegian roads, particularly in affluent parts of Oslo, the capital. Charging stations are relatively easy to find in major cities.

“I had been wanting an electric car for a long time for environmental reasons, but they were expensive,” said Zanete Anderson Lilley, a senior adviser in Norway at the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental advocacy organization. Ms. Lilley eventually bought a Kia Soul, a small five-door electric car, for about 200,000 kroner, or around $24,600, last summer.

“If it wasn’t for the subsidies, I guess most people would still choose fuel,” she added.

Despite the growth of electric cars, the vehicles, and the government’s support for them, are not universally popular.

Last year, Norway’s conservative government proposed paring back the various forms of tax relief for electric cars. But the plans attracted criticism and have not made headway.

Ms. Bu, of the Norwegian Electric Vehicle Association, said such a move would create “great uncertainty at a time when increasing numbers of Norwegians are convinced that electric cars are something for them.”

For Adam Curylo, a bus driver who lives in Baerum, near Oslo, with his wife and son, electric cars have limitations. Mr. Curylo, a native of Poland, bought a Nissan Leaf electric car because it meant he could avoid paying road tolls. Although it functioned well in city driving, he was frustrated by the lack of charging points in more rural areas.

“I hate it — it is neither pleasurable nor practical,” he said. “We have it just because it is cheaper to use at the moment.”

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“Electric cars are just a temporary solution,” Mr. Curylo added, “they are not the future.”

GM has released pictures of the inside of a fully autonomous, driverless taxi design that the company is currently trying to get approved by US regulators. The inside of the GM/Cruise self-driving car is about what you’d expect from such a vehicle — there’s no steering wheel and no pedals of any kind.

Tentative plans call for such a vehicle to be used in the company’s first commercial ridesharing fleet — with the aim being for a launch of such services sometime in 2019.

Notably, the doors of the design in question are capable of opening themselves, and there are reportedly other features meant to accommodate the impaired.

“General Motors filed a Safety Petition with the Department of Transportation for its fourth-generation self-driving Cruise AV, the first production-ready vehicle built from the start to operate safely on its own, with no driver, steering wheel, pedals or manual controls,” GM reports.

“GM executives said the automaker has asked the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to allow 16 alterations to existing vehicle safety rules — such as having an airbag in what would normally be the driver’s seat, but without a steering wheel — to enable the deployment of the Cruise AV,” Reuters reports.

“The automaker would then need to obtain similar approval from individual US states. GM executives said 7 US states already allow the alterations sought by the automaker. In other states — including those that stipulate a car must have a licensed human driver — GM will work with regulators to change or get a waiver from existing rules.”

As with Ford’s recently revealed plans involving Postmates, it’s not yet clear where GM/Cruise’s first deployments off this new vehicle would roll out.

It should probably be noted here, even though many have no doubt already guessed, that initial deployments will only be in cities that have been extensively mapped and where there is likely to be strong enough demand to justify continued mapping efforts.

Jfake Hname • 2 hours agoimo this is bigger news than it appears. i dont think most people understand just how much of a cars design is based around ICE drivetrains and driver controls. eliminating both of these will increase the 3D printability and ease automating production.

A mass produced 3D printed BEV with no driver controls will be produced like "bullets out of a machine gun". Imo they will get much cheaper, much quicker once this snowball gets rolling.

Zachary Shahan Community Manager > Jfake Hname • an hour agoi have to admit that i'm surprised GM is where it seems to be.

Fred > Jfake Hname • an hour agoIs it a BEV? The article doesn't say and controlling the car is completely different than powering it.

He Said, She Said. What’s Going On With Tesla Model 3 Battery Production?

January 26th, 2018 by Steve Hanley

SNIPPET:

Tesla has reacted angrily to areport by CNBC claiming that delays in getting Model 3 production up to speed are the result of shoddy practices at the Gigafactory in Nevada. CNBC reports several employees at that facility have told it the battery packs destined for new Model 3 electric cars are being built by hand by inexperienced workers, leading to delays and waste. Those employees suggest the battery packs that are being made contain defects that could potentially lead to hazardous conditions in the cars.

The supplier of the automated battery assembly line "dropped the ball".

This was discovered in June or July.

Panasonic did reassign a few dozen employees to help Tesla fill battery packs by hand, about 50 packs per day.

The first action of Tesla was to rewrite the code for these machines.Then they had to debug and configure / tune the machines.These machines with rewritten code came on-line again in mid-December.The packing machines started to function at low speed, 100-200 packs per day.Manual filling of battery packs was not needed anymore.

Between Christmas and New year packing machines started to reach 200 per day more often. This is knowledge from Electrek comment sections and Tesla comments, translated in concrete numbers.

This was the big bottleneck that pushed the 5000/week production goal back by three months, twice!

This battery assembly line is probably less than 0.1% of the whole production line, but blocking the other 99.9% to deliver the cars at the speed the other 99.9% is capable of.

You can fault Tesla for not discovering this problem sooner. But saying Teslacan't produce at volume for this one problem is idiotic.

This CNBC report is about a problem that is solved, it is completely irrelevant.

Aglebert COMMENT: I say this a Koch Brothers 🦀 funded mens rea move(i.e. use the media to tank the stock price with a hit piece full of half truths) to destroy the most successful manufacturer of socially responsible automobiles in history.

The Koch roachs are not limited to our fossil fuel babying government.

California will work to put five million zero-emission cars on its roads by 2030, Governor Jerry Brown announced last week. An executive order signed by Brown on Friday outlines a $2.5 billion electric vehicle initiative for the next eight years, including directives to build an additional 250,000 charging stations and increased rebates to encourage consumers to buy electric cars.

California currently has around 350,000 electric vehicles on its roads, and Governor Brown's previous target was to see 1.5 million vehicles by 2025.

Scandinavia Is Home To Heavy-Duty Electric ⚡ Construction Equipment & Truck Development

January 30th, 2018 by Steve Hanley

Companies in Scandinavia are pushing the development of electric construction equipment and medium-duty trucks forward. In Norway, two companies are working on electric earth moving equipment and in Sweden, Volvo Trucks has announced it will begin selling electric medium-duty delivery trucks in 2019.

Pon Caterpillar 323F

Pon Equipment, in association with Caterpillar, has developed a zero emissions 25 inch (63.5 cm) electric excavator called the 323F that will be sold as part of the company’s Z Line of zero emissions earth moving and construction equipment. The machine can operate for up to 7 hours on a single battery charge. One hour of charging using a 400 volt charger gives it enough power to do another hour of work. If a 1000 volt charger is available, a full battery charge can be obtained in about 90 minutes. The electric digger is intended for use in urban areas where noise and emissions standards are becoming increasingly restrictive.

Pon Caterpillar electric shovel

The 323F looks like a normal power shovel, except that it has no exhaust pipe. It is painted in green to highlight its eco-friendly characteristics and was developed over a period of 11 months by a small team of at Pon with help from Caterpillar, which contributed much of the software needed to operate the new machine.

Now that the basic engineering has been done, Pon plans on offering a conversion service that will replace the diesel engine in a conventional piece of equipment with the batteries, software and controls from the 323F for customers who need zero emissions capability but don’t want to discard machinery that is still satisfactory for more years of service.

NASTA Collaborates On Battery/Fuel Cell Shovel

NASTA is Norway’s largest distributor of construction equipment, specializing in Hitachi products. In cooperation with several partners, including Siemens and Sintef, it is developing its own 30 inch (76 cm) zero emissions excavator which will feature battery and fuel cell technology. The first prototype will be built on the chassis of an existing Hitachi excavator.

“This will be an exciting project for the construction industry. Larger, emission-free construction machines are already in demand by public builders … SINTEF will use its expertise in hydrogen and battery technology, as well as construction processes with NASTA and Siemens to develop a 30-inch (76 cm) excavator, “says Marianne Kjendseth Wiik, a researcher at SINTEF.

The Zero Emissions Digger (ZED) program is being conducted in cooperation with the Research Council of Norway, Enova, and Innovation Norway. The new equipment will be free of carbon and nitrogen emissions. The prototype should be ready for testing at construction sites in and around Oslo in 2019. It is expected to save more than 100 tons of carbon dioxide emissions 🔥 annually.

Why can't other automakers besides Tesla make an EV with a 300+ mile range?

Joshua Pritt , driving Chevy Volts since December 2011.

Answered Tue Jan 30, 2018

Simple . Electric cars have near zero maintenance. Rotate the tires once or twice a year, refill the wiper fluid, and replace wiper blades every year or so.

If you have a liquid cooled battery like the Chevy Bolt or Tesla you have to check and flush and fill if needed every 100k miles or so. This will eat into their bottom line since most of the profit from selling gas cars comes from the many years of oil changes, gasket replacements, tune ups, fuel injector cleaning, belt and hose replacements, on and on and on forever until it finally all falls apart.

Tesla has gathered so many millions of miles of data from their fleet of cars on the road they have a really good idea how long their electric motors should last. That's why they guarantee their new Tesla Semi truck for one million miles!💫

The UK-based electric motor manufacturer YASA will be increasing its production capacity 50-fold over the coming months. That is, it will be increasing from a production capacity of 2,000 units a year to 100,000 units a year. The increase is in anticipation of a surging market for electric vehicles in coming years, company execs have revealed.

The vast increase in production capacity will be accomplished, as one would probably guess, via the development of a new production factory — one which, given recent public comments from government figures, is likely getting a fair amount of government support.

Yasa electrc Motor 💫

This news follows on the announcement late last year that the UK government had settled on the site to be used for the creation of a new auto battery research and development facility — one meant to keep the UK relevant as regards modern automotive technology.

The coverage from Reuters continues: “On Thursday, YASA, based near the English city of Oxford, said it had raised another £15 million ($21 million) as part of its expansion. … The firm exports 80% of production and has worked with companies including Britain’s two biggest carmakers Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and Nissan as well as Aston Martin.”

Both Nissan and Jaguar Land Rover appear to have some of the most aggressive electric vehicle growth plans on the market. The fact that YASA is announcing such massive expansion seems to imply that one or both of them have given the go-ahead to start ramping up production like never before.✨

“JLR will decide this year whether to build electric cars in its home market, previously citing factors such as pilot testing and support from science and government as pre-requisites.”

Judging on various other announcements recently, it seems fairly likely that the UK government will offer JLR a compelling incentives and support package to keep the company there.

With regard to the recent announcement from YASA, CEO Chris Harris stated: “Our customers are looking to adopt innovative new technologies such as YASA’s axial-flux electric motors and controllers in order to meet the needs of the rapidly expanding hybrid and pure electric automotive market.”

As part of a push to become one of the top auto manufacturers operating in the country, Nissan will be pumping 60 billion yuan ($9.5 billion) into its operations in China over the next 5 years, company execs have revealed.

The plan, reportedly, is to focus on plug-in electric vehicles and on the Venucia, Nissan, and Infiniti brands — with the intent being to boost local sales volume to 2.6 million vehicles a year by 2022 — in cooperation with its local joint-venture partner Dongfeng Group. Currently Nissan sells around 1.5 million vehicles a year in China (the world’s largest auto market).

The new “Triple One”✨ strategy will presumably see sales of a rebranded version of the new Nissan Leaf as a focus, but reportedly there will also be an attempt to increase the sale of commercial light-duty vans, trucks, etc.

I hadn’t intended to write an article on this subject, given our focus here at CleanTechnica on clean tech, but given that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has brought it up a number of times in recent weeks — and released some images of the payload in question — it seems worth doing.

I’m talking here about the first SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launch, which will play host to Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster as a dummy payload, reportedly. That launch is tentatively slated for February 6th, sometime during a 3-hour launch window that opens at 1:30 PM Eastern Time — and has now been granted full approval by the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation.

As seen in the picture above, Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster is already packed and ready to go…with it being an interesting thing to note that the (apparently) first production car to be sent into space is going to an all-electric one.

"The Tesla Roadster in question has apparently undergone some modifications in preparation for the launch, but it’s not quite clear what those would be — a removal of potentially dangerous materials, perhaps?"

I checked that out. I wonder what they did to the tires so they won't blow up in the vaccum of space.

Even if they modified them to be solid rubber, that would explode too because solid rubber has lots of tiny air pockets in it that expand in vacuum.

Agelbert COMMENT 2:

This is an excellent way to focus world attention on Tesla and Electric Vehicles. The sales of t-shirts with a graphic of this roadster being checked out by an ET in a flying saucer should be as profitable as they are funny.

Many other advertisements using the EV roadster in space as a symbol of progress and a sustainable future with a viable biosphere 🌺 🌻 🌼 🌷 🌱 🌲 🌳 🌴 🌵 🌾 🌿 both here AND at Mars can help the peoples of the world turn their back on the polluting energy technologies of the past.

PCX ELECTRIC is an electric scooter equipped with Honda's unique high-output electric motor that aims to produce more harmonious mobility in urban traffic, and a removable Honda Mobile Power Pack. 🌞

While sharing the same basic design as the Hybrid PCX, this all-electric motor design emphasizes the EV components, and with a special hugger fender around the motor, pursues a clean and sophisticated image.

The white-dominated color scheme with blue and black accents makes for a clean and sophisticated look, neatly coordinated with Honda's Honda Mobile Power Pack coloring. Honda PCX Electric is scheduled to begin releasing and go on sale in 2018 in Asia including Japan.